Maren. Our old friend has been wheeled out again, not without justification in this case. But what a strange country it is.

If you are of the persuasion that America will be a totalitarian police state sooner rather than later, one wonders in that odd sort of way if Trump isn't just the right catalyst to "fulfil the prophecy"?

I swear by God this holy oath, that I want to offer unconditional obedience to the Führer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, the commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, and be prepared as a brave soldier to risk my life for this oath at any time.

He explained how turf wars developed between local and international press, and how he had had reporters in tears begging for extra information otherwise they ‘would be fired’, leading to stories containing “wild allegations” in the media against parents Kate and Jerry McCann.

How did your experience leading the British government’s media monitoring unit prepare you for working in PR?

“It gave me a crucial insight into the workings of central government structures at the highest level, along with an understanding of the civil service culture and attitudes – all vital for effective public affairs outreach in my later PR life.

It also gave me strong political insight. Although I, of course, operated with strict neutrality under the Civil Service Code of propriety, working for Ministers of the day, no matter which Party was in power.”

Perhaps it doesn’t make much difference which Party is/was ‘in power’.

"Perhaps it doesn’t make much difference which Party is/was ‘in power’."

Indeed not.

Bringing together a number of 'clues', not least among which is KM's 'The police don't want a murder in Portugal, so they're blaming us', I am of the opinion that the abduction was an outlet required of the McCanns, not conceived by them.

Thereafter we have the law of unintended consequences in full swing, the entire marketing machine knowing full well that they were Teflon coated and could press on regardless. Clarence Mitchell got aboard the gravy train at the earliest opportunity, having been given the key to the vault by Tony Blair.

The entire affair fills me with revulsion - for those who instigated the deceit and those who have capitalized upon it ever since. They have no moral principles whatsoever. Utterly shameful the lot of them.

“The entire affair fills me with revulsion - for those who instigated the deceit and those who have capitalized upon it ever since. They have no moral principles whatsoever. Utterly shameful the lot of them.”

"I always had the impression that the OC grass play area photos were taken on 28 April."

Entirely reasonable. Throw in the late afternoon/early evening sun and you have the typical 'arrival photo'

If those 2 May attributions are not inventions by Albym et al, then where did the idea that these several pictures were taken on 2 May come from - and why?

If it should represent 'official information', then it has to be viewed as another device by which to extend Madeleine's supposed occupation of the OC premises (although it would still not make sense, on account of the crèche timing - A 5.15 photo on the grass preceding a 5.30 retrieval of the subject from daycare?)

As for the photographic duplications, I have no explanation beyond the commonplace observation that so much of the background to this case defies normal explanation. That in itself should give cause for concern.

"Together we took Sean and Amelie back to the Toddler Club at around 2.40 pm and dropped Madeleine off with the Minis ten minutes later. Ella was already there.” says Kate McCann.

As you say “Who cares whether Ella was there or not?”

Was Madeleine there?

KM (p.65)

“Fiona and Dave had been windsurfing that morning and had seen Madeleine’s group, who had gone down to the beach for their ‘mini-sail’ activity. We heard later that they’d been on a speedboat as well as a dinghy. Fiona told me she’d spotted Ella there but not Madeleine.”

Mark Warner did not return Ms Baker to Portugal from Greece and she has since left the company. She is now a live-in nanny looking after three children. Her location is being withheld on the request of the McCanns.

Her location is being withheld on the request of the McCanns?

And the Mail can reveal her identity, what her parents do for a living and where they live.

“As for the holidays, on the first day (Saturday, 28 April 2007) they had dinner in the complex, making their way to the Millennium restaurant. No-one booked dinner at that restaurant, all, including the children, having gone for dinner around 18h00.

“The Millennium used to serve dinner on other days (except Saturday) only from 19:30 and, for this reason, they decided to start dining at the Tapas, seeing that, in addition to the above, they would be closer to the apartments. This was discussed at the table in the Millennium on the first night."

R. O'Brien confirmed:

"this time was late for the children, and thus they opted to have dinner, after that day, in the Tapas Restaurant. That restaurant is situated next to the pool, in the patio areas of the block of apartments where they found themselves lodged. The deponent furthers that the daughters of David and Fiona Payne are very agitated, and that they preferred to be the closest possible to the apartment. All the couples agreed, without objections.”

Apart from O'Brien and Tanner, how many of the others made reference in their statements to this 'discussion at the table', and their collective decision to dine at the Tapas bar thereafter?

None of them. Fiona Payne (mother to two 'agitated' daughters) had nothing at all to say about dinner at the Millennium Restaurant on the Saturday night. Kate McCann likewise. No one else refers, either to the discussion or their agreement 'without objection'.

The only two to come up with a retro-fit explanation of the group's decision to eat at the Tapas Restaurant every night from Sunday therefore (not Tuesday, as the McCanns would have us believe) were JT and her husband, the very man who was determined to make the reservation that same day. (KM has since made the false claim that it was RO who did so on the Monday night).

If Madeleine disappeared unexpectedly on the Thursday night, why should events of the prior weekend provoke deceit? (that's a rhetorical question btw.).

"It wasn’t until a year later, when I was combing through the Portuguese police files, that I discovered that the note requesting our block booking was written in a staff message book, which sat on a desk at the pool reception for most of the day. This book was by definition accessible to all staff and, albeit unintentionally, probably to guests and visitors, too. To my horror, I saw that, no doubt in all innocence and simply to explain why she was bending the rules a bit, the receptionist had added the reason for our request: we wanted to eat close to our apartments as we were leaving our young children alone there and checking on them intermittently."

A year later eh? With no such notebook recorded in the files as far as anyone else is aware.

A more credible explanation may be arrived at via Jane Tanner's 'non-denial denial' toward the close of her own statement to police (10.5.07):

“Prompted to clarify which member of the group booked the first dinner at Tapas she responded that she did not know. She clarifies that, that morning, she played tennis with Kate going, at the end of the game, to the restaurant to make the booking. She recalls that, when they arrived there, the booking was already made and she had not questioned who had made it. Asked if it would have been her companion Russell O'Brien who booked that meal, on his own initiative, she relates that it could have been done by any other person but considers [someone with] an excessively organised disposition would have done it, [something] usual of her companion.”

OC receptionist Luisa Ana de Noronha de Azevedo Coutinho told police on 8 May of a male, tall and thin, who approached her to request a booking for the whole group, for the whole week and always at 20.30.

“The man justified his request by saying that the group had many small children whom they would leave alone when they went to dine. She said that at intervals some two parents would go to the apartments to see if everything was OK.

“The deponent made some comments about the request, saying that the Tapas received many requests and that MW only had a quota of 20 per day, but upon the insistence of the guest she managed to make the bookings requested.”

So Jane Tanner and Kate McCann turn up at the Tapas reception after their game of tennis, with the intention of booking a table for the Sunday night, only to be told that someone else from their party had already done so (picture the scene: 'Look, I've already made a note of the request. Here you are. See.').

And now an open question: With MM not 'disappearing' until 3 May, why should the T9 (Jane Tanner and Russell O'Brien in particular) have been evasive about who made the FIRST Tapas booking that week or, indeed, for that week?

It seems strange that Russell didn’t tell Jane that he made the first booking, or was it another ‘tall and thin male’?

“At first dinner was booked each day having later been diarised as a permanent booking for 20h30 until the end of the stay.”

Is it possible that the first booking on Sunday morning was a ‘one-off’, and Rachael Oldfield made a permanent booking in the afternoon, as she states on 9 April 2008?

http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/RACHAEL-OLDFIELD-ROGATORY.htm

“I think Matt was up by that stage, think he came out in the afternoon, erm and then we'd booked to eat in the Tapas Bar that night because The Millennium had just been one kind of a bit of trek and a bit too stressful with all the kids and it was, thought it would be quite nice to have dinner by ourselves, so erm I booked a table for eight thirty in the Tapas for us and we just thought we'd do our own sort of baby listening as you know we, well you know if we'd been in another Mark WARNER resort thats what would have happened'."

"In spite of what we’d been told about booking the Tapas restaurant, Rachael managed to get a table for nine at 8.30pm pencilled in for the rest of the week after having a word with the receptionist at the pool and Tapas area."

“Gerry and I have always quite liked having a routine, though I wouldn’t say we were obsessed by it, and our children, like most children, seemed to like it, too. This holiday was no exception. It’s hard to accept that living our lives in such an ordinary way might have been our downfall. Was someone watching us that week? Watching Madeleine? Taking note of the pattern of our days?”

says Kate McCann in ‘madeleine’.

How can their children seem to like it when they weren’t aware of their parents’ absence? Two sedated and one dead?

Speaking of 'routine':

"So basically we'd go and have dinner and then we'd sort of run back you know every fifteen twenty minutes and have a listen at the door and make sure nobodys screaming their head off'." - Rachael Oldfield

"It seems strange that Russell didn’t tell Jane that he made the first booking, or was it another ‘tall and thin male’?"

JT was off playing tennis with KM at the time.

"Is it possible that the first booking on Sunday morning was a ‘one-off’, and Rachael Oldfield made a permanent booking in the afternoon, as she states on 9 April 2008?"

OC receptionist Luisa Ana de Noronha de Azevedo Coutinho told police on 8 May of a male, tall and thin, who approached her to request a booking for the whole group, for the whole week and always at 20.30.

If a male had already booked for the whole week, RO needn't have repeated the exercise.

Kate McCann (in 'madeleine'):

"In spite of what we’d been told about booking the Tapas restaurant, Rachael managed to get a table for nine at 8.30pm pencilled in for the rest of the week after having a word with the receptionist at the pool and Tapas area."

Rachael's big moment, described here, was on the Monday, supposedly. She cannot have made the booking on Sunday afternoon, given a male had done so earlier that morning.

Among the relevant statements (waiters, receptionist, Tapas manager, T9) there is a lack of consensus regarding the claims of K. McCann, R. Oldfield etc., coupled with a conspicuous attempt on the part of Jane Tanner to distance Russell O'Brien from the process.

Madeleine McCnnn was witnessed with her family by an OC cleaner at about 1.15 p.m., which suggests the tapas booking issue was not an aspect of any 'grand plan' associated with her disappearance. It was, however, significant enough for several people to have lied about it. I wonder why?

I think it more likely that it was Russell O'Brien who had knowledge of/involvement in 'events'. The sudden and inappropriate insertion of a reference to M's disappearance into a chronological account of said events is both unexpected and suspicious in my view

McCann: "They've had their say. We've HAD the inquiry. We need full implementation of Leveson".

Presumably he's referring to OG, which has a further six months to run?

And Mitchell taking bids for 'ten year anniversary specials'. It seems we have a Kenneth Wolstenholme moment ("Some people are on the pitch. They think it's all over!").

This disgusting creature has the sheer gall to bleat about press intrusion and litigation as a last resort. HE's A BAREFACED LIAR. They PAID for PR to feed the press and deliberately side-stepped the PCC.

How the bounds of incredibility are continually being stretched in this case is almost beyond understanding.

“As more TV and press turned up in Luz, Alex Woolfall gave us helpful pointers on handling the media. We came to rely on Alex as our de facto media liaison officer. It was he who guided us early on, giving us simple advice that has stood us in good stead since. He told us to ask ourselves the following two questions before giving anything to anyone in the press: what was our objective, and how was it going to help? We’ve always tried to remember those basic principles in all our interactions with the media. Alex explained the rather Pavlovian responses of the media pack. If we began to give daily statements, for example, they would expect one at the same time every day. Sometimes, he said, all they needed was to be fed something to keep them happy, and if that was the case, this might be our only objective in speaking to them.”

https://twitter.com/woolfallalexPR guy. Always chasing the sunshine. Views are my own, unless shamelessly plagiarised. Often they make no sense whatsoev...

The arrests were supervised by the Central Department of Investigation and Penal Action and police said that there more people have detained in the "very complex and time consuming" investigation that has been going on for several years.

It's one of those 'you remember where you were' moments in history for me (Germany of all places).

I shouldn't be too concerned about the drugs issue in retrospect. The England players were on a 'substance' every Saturday night ('the sauce' as it was commonly known at the time). I remember seeing George Cohen at 'the club' myself (and that's not FFC btw.)

The immediate impression is of Theresa May wanting to take the football indoors so as not to have to play with the Portuguese. (indoor five-a-side with Redwood promised a result whereas facing Eusebio's mates didn't).

“A member of staff based at the Millennium restaurant, for example, stated how she saw us there every morning having breakfast with the children. She described in detail what a nice family we were and what a lovely relationship we had with Madeleine. Very kind of her to say so – but we weren’t there. We had breakfast in the Millennium restaurant only once, on our first morning in Praia da Luz, along with all of our friends.”

“We were informed that we would need to wear ‘dark suits’ to meet the Pope. Clothes again! On the Tuesday morning Gerry and I went to a big shopping centre to buy something appropriate. As a woman who could not yet enjoy a snack in a café without feeling guilty, I could not get my head round this. My daughter was missing and here we were shopping! It was unthinkable. I moved randomly from rack to rack, from shop to shop, the tears rolling down my face. I longed for it all to go away.”

You were not wrong when first you posted the comment, and correct in re-posting same.

A spell in the supermarket café just now has enabled me to see more clearly the fallacy inherent in a couple of recent observations by Blacksmith.

With specific reference to the Portuguese investigation, up to and including its archiving, he states:

"All this makes me quite certain of the direction things are going."

The direction in which things WERE going is plain as a pikestaff. There are no such clear grounds for transplanting that momentum onto events since however, much less speaking as in the 'present continuous' (which he later extends into the future):

"most of us are content to....wait for the inevitable denouement to be brought to us by the legal system one way or another."

He who speaks of 'Hall's fantasies' (and other optimists of his ilk) appears to overlook political reality.

The UK suspects in a heinous crime committed on Portuguese territory fled that country and took refuge behind an internationally known extradition lawyer. The conduct of the case 'review', in a matter over which the Portuguese continue to hold primacy, was sufficient to send a clear political message: The UK has no intention of pursuing the only suspects over an overseas incident which it (the UK government) regarded at the time as an inconvenience.

Dr Amaral's civil litigation aside, what might one suppose should be the Portuguese attitude to the prospect of having to spend time, effort, and THEIR money, first in bringing the suspects back to Portugal, then, and only then, expending further TE & M in prosecuting the case through their own judicial system, always supposing they had sufficient evidence to warrant their doing so?

The suspects are off their soil and represent no physical danger to members of Portguese society. The British seem perfectly happy to spend millions in an attempt to convince the great British public of their innocence.

The bottom line? It's no skin off their (Portugal's) nose if UK ltd. choose to cosset a pair of international fraudsters. Why should the Portuguese waste any more of their resources on the matter? They could doubtless find better uses for the Euro equivalent of £12m stg.

In sum, it's more cost-effective by far for the Portuguese to swallow their pride and let the UK continue to show itself up for the degraded monstrosity it has become; a society where the politics of greed are matched only by those of envy.

As for Operation Grange...a queue has no doubt formed already of imminent retirees keen to take on the 'challenge' of finding Madeleine McCann, like a retinue of managers convinced they'll win the Premier league during their one season with Scunthorpe Utd.

I couldn't agree more. But hasn't the message always been there? It was certainly not lost on Amaral when Leicester plod left Portugal hanging on to Gerry McCann's shirt tail. That they were there team handed in the first place, I think tells us much.

In looking for Amaral's quote, I came across the first post on Wristbands. (started well after The Gallery) Not come very far have we?

“In statements recorded recently in London, sources close to the former Liberal Party candidate and specialist in public relations, confirmed that Justine McGuiness was even allegedly the target of various pressures, notably in the legal field, meaning, for her, that she should keep quiet about everything she saw and heard during the time she worked for Kate and Gerry McCann.”

13 September 2007

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/sep/13/marketingandpr.crime

“One reason Ms McGuinness has given to journalists for her departure is that the McCanns have been ordered to remain silent because of the changing nature of the investigation and she feels she cannot help them further.”

“We heard from Clarence that evening [8 September 2007]. Before long Justine would be moving on to pursue her political career and we’d always hoped he would be able to return as our family spokesperson. The government, however, had other ideas. They forbade him from any further involvement with us because of our arguido status. Clarence was very upset, as were we.”

As regards her journey to Portimão on 7 September in Justine’s ‘little car’, Kate writes:

“Just when it seemed the whole situation couldn’t get any more surreal, before turning the corner to the police station, Justine stopped the car, took her lipstick out of her bag and, looking into the rear-view mirror, began to reapply it.”

“On April 30, three days before Madeleine went missing, a Portuguese holidaymaker, Nuno Lourenco, chased a man he had spotted taking photos of his four-year-old daughter at a beach near Sagres. Lourenco took an obscured mobile phone photo of the man who fled in a car driven by a woman.

The McCann family were on the beach, some 20 miles west of their resort, on the same day - an eerie coincidence that indicates to Portuguese police that this was the co-ordinated kidnapping of a preselected child.”

The McCann family were on the beach, some 20 miles west of their resort, on the same day (Monday 30 April)?

http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/KATE-MCCANN.htm

“Following a request from the inspector, she authorises a reading of the calls on her mobile phone. Apart from the Kids Club and the apartment, they only went once to the beach with Madeleine and the other children and only for a very short period of time, since the weather was changeable. They could only go to the beach between 1.30 and 3pm, the time when they went back to the club. At the beach, they only ate an ice cream then they went back to the apartment.”

KM (in ‘madeleine’)Tuesday 1 May

“In the afternoon Gerry and I decided to take the children down to the beach.”

Sniffer dogs described as 'failing to find class A drugs' passing through Manchester airport between Nov. 2014 and June 2015, although one detected a quantity of cheese and sausages in that time.

It is not that the dogs' performance is anything to laugh at, but that the BBC reporting is irresponsible and misleading, inviting the stupid to do what they do best - jump to the wrong conclusion because it appeals to them.

The dog that identified the foodstuffs drew attention to what IT was trained to detect, which was NOT class A drugs at all but illegal animal products.

And the drug sniffers?

According to the BBC, an official report 'concluded that "Class A drugs detections were not at the level that might be expected", and said Border Force should review "how particular flights were risk assessed" and where staff and dogs were deployed.'

Ah. So it's not the dogs failing at all, but the Border Force targeting the wrong flights - flights on which Class A drugs happened not to be carried (while the 'Grass' 'Coke' and 'Smack' crept in aboard flights which, unfortunately, the force chose not to target and where the dogs did not even get a sniff. So how are they supposed to detect anything?

(Thanks to 'Maggie Smith' on Twitter for bringing the subject sarcastically to everyone's attention - another one who can't see further than her nose)

“Madeleine’s group, the Mini Club for three-to-fives, was based in a light, airy room above the twenty-four-hour reception. This was slightly further away and it was a few mornings before we got our bearings and found a quicker route there. Ella went too and although until the previous day the two girls hadn’t seen each other for several months, they soon became great pals.”

I just learned what ‘get one's bearings’ means and now I wonder if it is true. A few mornings?

Furthermore, I cannot understand why Tanner and O’Brien allowed Kate to involve their daughter in that book, or didn’t they have a choice?

Kate continues by saying:

“Madeleine’s nanny, Cat, I warmed to straight away, as did Madeleine. She was bubbly, smiley, kind and bursting with enthusiasm. It was obvious that she was doing the job because she loved children, not simply as a way of spending a few months in the sun”

To be fair, none of these allegations are new. What is new are the ‘other names’ that have surfaced as a result of the Panama Papers: Luís Portela, head of Portuguese pharmaceutical group Bial, former Benfica president Manuel Vilarinho, law firm Abreu Advogados and the number of tourist complexes from the Algarve that have been mentioned.

"Between July and December last year, the Defendant published a number of articles which referred to the Tapas 7 or to one or more of the Claimants individually. These articles suggested that at least some of the Claimants, in particular Dr O’Brien, had been identified as potential suspects by the Portuguese authorities. The articles also suggested that the Claimants had covered up the true facts concerning Madeleine McCann’s disappearance and misled the authorities investigating her disappearance."

‘murder case' to rule out ‘a tragic accident’?‘suspected’ because there is no body and there is no murderer?

KM (in ‘madeleine’):“We heard from Clarence that evening [8 September 2007]. Before long Justine would be moving on to pursue her political career and we’d always hoped he would be able to return as our family spokesperson."

9 September 2007"Police don't want a murder in Portugal and all the publicity about them not having paedophile laws here, so they're blaming us." - Kate McCannhttp://bit.ly/22IaOQS

“She died in the apartment as a result of a tragic accident and the parents simulated an abduction after failing to care of their children,” Tavares de Almeida, former chief inspector at Portimao police station during the initial months of the investigation, told the court in Lisbon.“These were the conclusions of a police report signed by me on September 10 2007,” he added.http://bit.ly/1ugBEk7

"Mr Duthie, who is head of Scotland Yard's Homicide and Major Crime Command, said: "There is ongoing work. There is always a possibility that we will find Madeleine and we hope that we will find her alive."

The Ministry of Environmental Protection started an investigation on Sunday into what caused about 500 students at Changzhou Foreign School in Jiangsu province to come down with a range of pollution-related illnesses.

What should the VERY FACT of the most recent Met Police PR announcement, by NOT Nicola Wall AND favouring the McCanns, tell us about the relationship between Operation Grange and any search for the truth behind Madeleine McCann's as yet unexplained disappearance?

And yet we are expected to vote for the politicians, who ultimately authorize the salaries of the likes of Sir Bernard Hyphen-Howe and his cohorts, when funding of the whole rancid gaggle is authorized by the Exchequer and paid for out of the public purse!

However, Mr Duthie insisted that the investigation may continue into 2017, saying: 'I imagine that if we have not completed our inquiries within six months we will go back to the Home Office and ask for more money.

The latest SY 'two-step' makes it perfectly clear that the Met. were unashamedly roped into collusion with the McCann directorate, whosoever that might be, and I doubt they operate out of Rothley, Leicestershire.

The game plan has always been to disregard the original Portuguese investigation, discredit Amaral's succinct synopsis (author guilty of naughtiness = he's wrong), and issue the McCanns with a UK certificate of innocence.

Never mind the 'Dunkirk spirit', this campaign followed the Gallipoli principle, i.e. press on without an adequate map of the overseas landscape - something they no doubt tried to construct over the last 5 years.

Well the wheels have come off and the collusion is clearly exposed for what it is. Now we really are owed an explanation for the farce!

The appeals court "decided that [Amaral] had the right to do what he did. It said he can write what he wants," Duarte, the lawyer, told the AP by telephone. "It absolved him, said he didn't have to pay anything."

She said the McCanns took the reversal in their stride after a long time battling in Portuguese courts.

"They're used to it," Duarte said.

Portuguese police closed the case in 2008 because authorities had detected no crime, but British police are still looking into it. Madeleine would turn 13 next month.

"Let me add how I very first heard of the McCanns. It was the very first day it was headline news in the UK – which I imagine was either one or two days after the event. The couple made two live press appearances (press conference, interview, I cannot pretend to recall). I was not watching, it was Nadira who paid attention, and Nadira made to me this remarkable observation. She said that not only had Kate McCann changed her clothes between appearances, she had changed her earrings to match. Nadira considered that to be very extraordinary in a frantically searching parent. That was the first I ever knew of the McCanns."

I never saw a court, not one first instance court nor a superior court, condemning a person to pay 500,000 euro for defaming another. Never saw that in my entire life. I would like that the deaths in Portugal had sentences like that, because the indemnifications when someone dies are "there you go 50,000 euro" which is a far inferior sum to a medium range car. That is how I would like to see the deaths compensated. I never saw half a million euro for defamation, just like it's abnormal to prohibit the publication of a book and the circulation of that book in the market, something that I find that jeopardizes the freedom of the press.

I should add that the metal worker's invective is probably inspired by the fact that Murray's confirmation of inappropriate official involvement in the McCann case, coming as it does from an insider, threatens to put the skids under his own thesis that the McCanns did it all unaided - except of course by the reprehensible media.

Murray's piece has lit a fuse. It remains to be seen which powder keg it runs to.

Dangerous stuff cordite. So dangerous the British 'dreadnoughts' of WW1 stored theirs in armour plated magazines - until they were called into action at the battle of Jutland. In order to improve the firing rate, sacks were brought up in anticipation and held in abeyance, nearer the guns. It didn't occur to anyone that an incoming shell might detonate an explosion or two - or three!!!

Back on topic: With significant overheads looming large, TM may have to reduce expenditure on their posse of 'Interlektyoualls' monitoring the internet.

“Sometimes I am so sad that my heart wants to explode,” an Afghan man says, speaking directly into the camera. “When your body is intact, your mind is different. You are content. But the moment you are wounded, your soul gets damaged. When your leg is torn off and your gait slows, it also burdens your spirit.” The speaker is an unnamed victim of a February 2010 drone strike in Uruzgan, Afghanistan, but he could just as easily be an Iraqi, a Pakistani, a Somali, or a Yemeni. He appears in National Bird, a haunting new documentary film by Sonia Kennebeck about the unexpected and largely unrecorded devastation Washington’s drone wars leave in their wake. In it, the audience hears directly from both drone personnel and their victims.

Gerry says of the Met review: “It has taken a huge amount of pressure off us. And the fact that they are actively investigating is a huge step forward.

“They have been incredibly thorough. You have got all that expertise and resources directed into finding Madeleine and finding who’s responsible. We always knew there were lots of leads that needed following up.

“As long as they are making progress, that is the most important thing. Madeleine is a missing British subject and incredibly vulnerable. We are hoping she is still out there.”

Followers

Contributors

The Gor Blimey Hall of Fame

We aren’t writing about the investigations into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann or any possible suspects: we don’t want to prejudice a legal process that is working in a most satisfactory way. - John Blacksmith

Read the Summers and Swan book if you want an impartial intelligent insight. It debunks conspiracy theorists amateur analysis - Jim Gamble

"I have seen no basis at any stage for challenging the integrity of the police."

Lord Justice Leveson - The Leveson Inquiry

We never take for granted the continued support and trust which Londoners feel for their Met.Bernard Hogan-Howe

Bush told reporters that “One day, people will look back at this moment in history and say, ‘Thank God there were courageous people willing to serve, because they laid the foundations for peace for generations to come.’

George W Bush on Iraq 2008

"It is sad that we live in a time when a talented and honourable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons," Bush said in Crawford, Texas.

''The effects of radiation do not come to people that are happy and laughing. They come to people that are weak-spirited, that brood and fret.''

“I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude, and I believe most Iraqis express that. I mean, the people understand that we've endured great sacrifice to help them. That's the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq.”

Bush interview 60 Minutes 1/14/07

“All hurricanes are acts of God because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.” – John Hagee

''Once Iraq becomes a very rich and prosperous country... we would hope that some consideration be given to repaying the United States some of the mega-dollars that we have spent here in the last eight years.

We were hoping that there would be a consideration of a payback because the United States right now is in close to a very serious economic crisis and we could certainly use some people to care about our situation as we have cared about theirs.''

Dana Rohrabacher (R) June 2011

''It's not natural for animals to eat each other, they have taken on the nature of Satan. What is natural for animals is to live in the way they were created in the Garden of Eden.''